Test Setup & Results

Test Setup

To evaluate the Sparkle Calibre X580, we’ll be using our X58 setup with the following specifications:

Intel Core i7-975 (3.33GHz)

Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard

3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill memory in triple channel mode

Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive

Windows 7 Ultimate

Obviously, the key comparison here would be between the Sparkle Calibre X580 and a reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580. Given the modest bump in clock speeds, we are not hoping for massive improvements in performance. What we are more interested in, however, is how cool the card will run and whether that will allow for better overclocking.

And since we’ve already established the performance of a reference GeForce GTX 580 in our earlier article, we have decided to cutback on the number of tests for this card rather than running the usual suite of benchmarking tests. As such, we'll be testing only 3DMark Vantage, Crysis Warhead, Far Cry 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2. These games will give us a good idea of the card’s performance.